AH would at least get some people who have left give this game another chance. Nobody is going to return when they know that the MW system that they hated has been slightly tweaked. Also no amount of fixing the MW will ever make them as handy as XI's AH.

Seems like SE's priorities are still all over the place with bikinis and leve tweaks when the real big issues that they have known since the first player poll are yet to be addressed.

I agree with the OP that even telling about plans for these basic features to be added would give a lot of players more faith in this game's future.

I saw a very old article on IGN today "what MMO should you play" and even though the content is ages old I think this one quote sums up XIV's development and public perception of SE's actions really well:

Version/latest additions: Final Fantasy XIV was released with a load of bugs, so most of the recent and future patches are simply going to address those. Most of the patch notes still address minor bugs while major issues (such as the broken Bazaar system) remain problematic.